Carl Keenan Seyfert (February 11, 1911 - June 13, 1960)

Carl Keenan Seyfert was born on February 11, 1911 as the son of a
pharmacist in Cleveland, Ohio,, where he also got his school education.
He studied at Harvard from 1929 to 1936, starting with medicine, but
inspired by Bart Bok, soon turned to astronomy. Here he obtained a B.S.,
M.S. (1933) and finally his PhD (1936) in astronomy; his Ph.D. thesis was
on "Studies of the External Galaxies," supervised by
Harlow Shapley, and focussed on colors and
magnitudes of galaxies.

In 1935 he married Muriel E. Mussells; they had a son, Carl Keenan, Jr.,
and a daughter, Gail Carol.

In 1936, he joined the Yerkes Observatory staff formed for establishing
the new McDonald Observatory. He served as a staff member at McDonald
from 1936 to 1940, where he collaborated with Daniel M. Popper on properties
of faint B stars, and continued his investigations on colors in spiral
galaxies.

From 1940 to 1942 he was at Mt. Wilson Observatory as a National Research
Council Fellow; here he studied a class of active galaxies, now called
Seyfert galaxies. In 1942, he returned to Cleveland and went to the Case
Institute to teach navigation to armed forces, and to participate in secret
military research. Despite wartime, he managed to carry out some astronomical
research at the Warner and Swasey Observatory of the Case Institute, equipped
with a new Schmidt telescope and objective prism, together with J.J. Nassau
and S.W. McCuskey.

In 1946, Seyfert joined the faculty of Vanderbilt University in Nashville,
Tennessee. At that time, the university only had the small Barnard Observatory,
equipped with a 6-inch refractor, which had once been used by Barnard, and
only a modest teaching program in astronomy. With considerable vigor, Seyfert
starting a new series of courses, and took effort to build a new observatory.
Within a few years, while busy wirh full-time duties in teaching and research,
Seyfert managed to get public support from the Nashville community. During the
work-intensivee planning and construction of the new observatory, he still found
time to give astronomy lectures outside the university, and even appeared in
television as daily weather-forecaster.
The new Arthur J. Dyer Observatory, equipped with a 24-inch reflector telescope,
was finally completed in December 1953.
Carl Seyfert became director of Dyer Observatory, a post he held for the rest
of his life. Research at the new observatory included stellar and galactic
astronomy, as well as new instrumental techniques.

Seyfert was a member in several professional societies, including the
American Astronomical Society, where he served on the Council from 1955 to
1958, and the British Royal Astronomical Society.
He also served in the Associated Universities Incorporated, as a member of
the Board of Directors of the Association of Universities for Research in
Astronomy (AURA), and in the Astronomy Advisory Panel of the National Science
Foundation (NSF).

Carl Seyfert died on June 13, 1960 in Nashville; Tennessee, in an automobile
accident, aged 49.

He was honored by the astronomical community by the naming of Moon crater
Seyfert (29.1N, 114.6E, 110 km diam) in 1970.
The 24-inch telescope at Dyer Observatory for which he had worked so much
now carries his name, "Seyfert Telescope."
His name is remembered by astronomers by the name of the "Seyfert Sextet"
for a group of galaxies he has studied, and most widely by the designation
"Seyfert Galaxies" or "Seyfert AGNs" for a class of active galaxies he
discovered.

Seyfert's contributions to Astronomy

Carl Seyfert contributed to many fields of astronomy, documented by the large
number of published papers. His research covered stellar and galactic
astronomy, frequently spectroscopic studies, as well as observing methods and
instrumentation.

During his time in Harvard, notably investigations of the colors, magnitudes
and color indices of galaxies resulted.
At McDonald, he investigated the properties, in particular spectroscopic, of
B stars and large PM stars, and did some work on variables. Also, he studied
the distribution of colors, emission nebulae and clusters in galaxies.

At Mt. Wilson, he did pioneering research of nuclear emission in spiral
galaxies: In 1943, he published a paper on galaxies with bright nuclei that
emit light with emission line spectrum, and exhibit characteristically
broadened emission lines. These galaxies are since called Seyfert Galaxies;
the most prominent example, identified as such by Seyfert, is
Messier 77 (NGC 1068).
Since, the class of Seyfert galaxies has been shown to be a subclass of a
much wider group, the galaxies with Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs).

At Warner Swasey Observatory and the Case Institute, his astronomical research
included stars and nebulae in the
Andromeda Galaxy M31, spectral luminosity
distribution of planetary nebulae, stellar spectra and lumionosity function of
stars in the Milky Way.
At that time, together with Nassau, he also obtained the first good color
photographs of nebulae and stellar spectra.

During the time at Vanderbilt, research included first the photometric
investigation of photographic plates of Barnard Observatory, and Shapley's
Harvard plates.
In 1951, he observed and described a group of galaxies around NGC 6027, now
known as "Seyfert's Sextet."
He was involved in instrumental innovations including the use of photomultiplier
tubes and television techniques in astronomy, and electronically controled
telescope drives.
Scientific results were obtained on variable stars, emission B stars in stellar
associations, and the Milky Way structure.